Here's some barroom banter-material for the three day weekend: psychologists at the University of Bristol have shown that "young, healthy people" (students and faculty from the University) drank beer faster when it was served up in a curved flute glass (pictured on the right) than they did when it was served to them in a straight glass (pictured on the left).

[Lead researcher Angela Attwood] believes that the reason for the increase in speed is that the halfway point in a curved glass is ambiguous. Social beer drinkers, she says, naturally tend to pace themselves when drinking alcohol, judging their speed by how fast they reach half-full. Another experiment in which participants were asked to judge different levels of fluid in photographs of straight and curved glasses showed that people consistently misjudge the volume in fluted glasses, Attwood says. A simple solution to this problem would be to mark beer glasses with the accurate halfway point, she says. "We can't tell people not to drink, but we can give them a little more control."